Cape Fold Belt - A north-south cross-section through the Agulhas Sea (see above). The brown structures are continental plates, the thick black layer on the left is paleo-Pacific Oceanic plate, red indicates the upper mantle, and blue indicates flooded areas or ocean. The top illustration depicts the geology about 510 million years ago, with the sediments which would eventually form the Cape Supergroup settling in the Agulhas Sea. The middle illustration depicts the Falkland Plateau drifting northwards once again to close the Agulhas Sea, causing the Cape Supergroup to be rucked into a series of folds, running predominantly east-west. The lowest illustration shows how subduction of the paleo-Pacific Oceanic plate under the Falkland Plateau, during the Early Permian period, raised a massive range of mountains. These eventually eroded into the Karoo Sea, forming the Karoo Supergroup. Ultimately, the Falkland Mountains eroded almost completely away, but the Cape Fold Mountains had, by this time, become buried under the Karoo sediments. Being composed largely of quartzitic sandstone, they resisted subsequent erosion, when continental uplifting caused several kilometers of Southern Africa&#39;s surface to be planed away, and thus persist to this day as the Cape Fold Belt. The remnant of the Falkland Plateau broke away from Africa, and drifted south-westwards to its present position in the western South Atlantic Ocean, following the breakup of Gondwana about 150 million years ago.